


Best Years of Our Lives

by AndyAO3



Series: Teddy Shepard Is A Little Shit [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, I blame JJ, M/M, silliness abounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 18:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3988372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shenanigans. Pure, utter shenanigans. With marshmallows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Years of Our Lives

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea around Easter but only just got around to writing it. JJ did the proofing and contributed slightly to the idea. 
> 
> <333

The vid opened with a wobbly view of Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau looking into his omni-tool's vid feed.

"Hey, extranet! It's your old pal Joker with another update from the _Normandy_ ," he said, grinning from ear to ear. "Right now it's about oh-seven-thirty and we're here in the mess hall with our good friend Lieutenant Killjoy Alenko."

Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko looked into the vid feed blandly when it was directed towards him, frowning. "What, you're recording this? Seriously?"

"You're no fun, man," Joker said, off-camera. Then he turned the camera back to himself briefly. "He's no fun," the pilot clarified as if he were telling the extranet an important secret. Off-camera, Alenko sighed in exasperation.

The vid feed was whipped around once more and pointed at the main hall. Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams stood in its focus in the center of the room, surrounded by Liara, Garrus, and Tali. Wrex was leaned against a console off to the side, and Karin Chakwas wasn't far off either. In Williams' hands, there was a carefully packed shipping container full of sugar-coated marshmallow treats, arranged in such a way that they wouldn't suffer too much from being smushed in transit.

"Figured you guys oughta see this," came Joker's voice from off-camera again.

"See, among _my_ people," Williams began, setting the container down on the countertop and getting out a large plate, "we have this tradition. There's a day during the Earth calendar year we like to observe as a holiday, and it's called Easter."

"Does this holiday have anything to do with the four cardinal directions on a human compass?" Liara asked; the camera view belatedly shifting to her, zooming and refocusing on her face. She was practically bouncing with wide-eyed xenoarchaeological excitement.

Williams paused. "Uh... not to my knowledge. It's to do with the resurrection of a religious figure who died to absolve us of our sins..." She trailed off at the room full of blank looks she was faced with. "--Anyway! So this holiday, right? We've got traditions to go with it."

"These traditions involve rotting your squishy human innards with excess sugars?" Wrex rumbled. The camera didn't focus on him, only flicking to his scarred face for an instant before refocusing on Williams, who snorted in response.

"Like you don't enjoy sweets from time to time," she countered. "So one of these traditions is to take these things--" she handed one to Liara, and the Asari sniffed it "--they're called 'peeps' by the way - and put them in the microwave while... uh," Williams trailed off uncertainly, glancing over at the camera and Alenko.

Alenko folded his arms, and the camera shifted its focus again to capture his authoritative stance. "While reflecting on our sins," he supplied, absolutely straightfaced.

Williams beamed at him. "Yeah, that! What he said."

"Many theistic humans believe that there's, ah... two versions of the afterlife," Alenko explained. "The gist of it is that there's the good kind for the people who were faithful and virtuous, usually some kind of paradise. Then for sinners and whatnot, there's the bad kind that's... well. Usually it boils down to not being the best place to end up in. The specifics vary between religions and cultures, though."

Liara was staring at him in wonder when the camera turned back to the gathering. "How fascinating! One could almost draw certain parallels between such a thing and the major surviving Asari religions." She was still holding the peep that had been handed to her with the tips of her delicate fingers, being careful not to accidentally crush it.

Joker blew an unimpressed-sounding raspberry from off-camera while Williams frowned at the young Asari. " _Anyway_ ," she said again, taking the peep back and plopping it on a large plate along with its brethren. "You can eat them if you want, too. That's kinda like, I dunno. Like eternal dismemberment for the souls of the damned or something, I guess?"

"Keelah..." Tali breathed. "Human traditions are so violent."

"Got any dextro ones?" Garrus drawled. The Turian tried to reach for the peeps on the plate, but Williams batted his hand away.

"No," Williams said firmly. "Besides, even if we did you'd end up with like... marshmallow in your face-bits." She gestured to the Turian's mouth.

Garrus looked insulted. "Mandibles."

"Yeah, that." It didn't look like Williams particularly cared what the term was, because she was already picking up the plate she'd loaded down with peeps and heading for the microwave. "See, when you put them in the microwave though? That represents like, y'know... the souls of all the sinners burning in Hell."

Wrex guffawed. "Pfah! I like this human tradition." The camera didn't shift to him. Apparently he wasn't as big of a priority for filming as the girls were. Chakwas chuckled - she wasn't focused on either - and Joker muttered "yeah, well of course _you_ would" from off-camera, as Williams opened up the microwave and set the plate inside.

She closed the door with a _clunk_ and then cracked her knuckles as she eyed the number pad that would set the time. "Let's see..." She craned her neck to glance back at Alenko again, smirking. "How much time d'you think we should put 'em in for, LT?"

"Oh no. This is your show, Ash. I'm not getting involved." For a second, he went quiet. The camera refocused on him, since Williams was still looking at him. Finally he sighed and seemed to give in. "Fine. Minute and a half."

Williams clapped her hands together in delight with a giddy laugh, punched the number in, and set the microwave to work its magic as she leaned back against a nearby counter with her arms folded over her chest and a smug look on her face.

"I really hope Shepard doesn't find out about this," Chakwas said from somewhere off to the side with a drawn-out sigh, while the aliens watched the peeps in the microwave with morbid fascination as they expanded and went everywhere. At the minute mark, there was a _foomp_ from the microwave as a glob of peep exploded and obscured a good half of the view; the sound was loud and startling enough to make Liara and Tali both jerk back, while an unfazed Garrus huffed at them.

Fifteen seconds after that, the ship's smoke alarms started going off.

**An annotation in the corner of the vid: _Smoke alarms on a ship are important. If there's a fire on a ship - which is a small, contained space with a finite amount of air - then everyone needs to know about it. However, they're not all that smart. The sensors that trigger them just aren't made to be able to tell the difference between a burning marshmallow and an actual fire. -LT_K_Alenko_ **

**A second annotation just below it: _stop cluttering up my vids with your nerdy annotations kaidan - t3h_j0k3r_ **

Joker snorted at the sound off-camera while Alenko could barely be seen shaking his head in the corner of the vid. For a second Williams just seemed surprised, blinking at the blaring sound that echoed through that part of the ship.

"Oh." It took a moment for it to hit her that her little experiment was the thing setting off the smoke alarm. "Oh, _shit_!" She sprung into action, frantically trying to stop the microwave before any fire suppression systems could go online, and her flailing made Joker start giggling as he was hard-pressed to hold the camera steady. Garrus made a sort of low warbling sound after having gone completely tense at the noise, Tali went from looking shocked at the initial sound's loudness to just looking slumped and dejected, and Liara seemed to be trying to shrink back in on herself defensively while looking absolutely baffled by the situation.

Then, just as Williams was figuring out how to stop the microwave, the fire suppression systems _did_ kick on, and the whole small gathering was doused in thick fluffy foam as the ship's VI pleasantly and calmly declared that said fire suppression was in progress. The camera's view veered wildly as Joker went from giggling to cackling.

The alarms stopped blaring. Joker got his laughter under control and managed to swing the camera back into focus on the group, with Alenko a slightly blurred figure in the very near foreground. Williams' annoyed little _hmph_ sent a puff of foam away from her face to float lazily towards the larger mess of foam on the floor.

Garrus spat out a bit of foam and wiped a bit more off of his face, but he was the most hopelessly in need of a shower out of all of them. "I'm going to assume that the fire extinguishers aren't part of this particular tradition?" he drawled, the first to break the silence.

Williams stared at him, or seemed to through the mess of foam. She straightened her posture and opened her mouth again to say something. Probably. Whatever it was she intended to say, she didn't get the chance.

"The hell is going on in here?" an angry, decidedly male voice snapped from somewhere off-camera. The vid suddenly jerked as Joker shifted in his seat, and then it whipped around again to focus on the one who'd spoken: a disheveled, bleary-eyed, decidedly pissed-off Commander Ted Shepard.

The camera moved once again to try and capture both Shepard and the foam-covered crew; Williams stood sharply at attention once she'd stopped gawking, and another puff of foam was sent flying by the movement. "Sir!"

Shepard squinted at her for a second before turning to Alenko. "Lieutenant," he said, sounding strained in his effort to stay polite, "can you explain why the mess hall smells like somebody lit a roman candle on a birthday cake?"

"Sir." Alenko fell into parade rest just as the camera refocused on him. "Williams proposed the idea of improving inter-species relations by putting marshmallows in the microwave, sir."

"With respect, sir?" Williams cut in. "The Lieutenant fully supported my idea. And technically they're marshmallow peeps."

Joker's voice could be heard in the background as well. "Yeah, uh. Kaidan didn't really try to stop her. Just sayin'."

Shepard turned his attention to Joker, and the camera was swiftly pointed at the floor. "--Are you _filming_ this, Joker?"

"No!" Joker said quickly.

"Yes," Alenko and Williams deadpanned in unison.

There was a quiet pause, a couple of seconds where nothing was filmed but the floor. Then, "...All right." It sounded like Shepard was somehow okay with it. "As you were, folks."

A collective sigh of relief could be heard from multiple sources. The camera was raised again to point at a foam-covered Williams.

"Oh and, uh. Joker?" Shepard began.

The vid shifted to focus briefly on the Commander. "Yessir?" Joker said off-screen.

Shepard smirked. "I want a link to that vid in my inbox when you're finished, got it?"

"Will do, Commander," Joker told him. The Commander's smirk turned into a broad, crooked grin at that.

\---

Kaidan paused the vid there as a soft smile came to his face, completely unbidden. That grin. What more was there to say about it? Everything would sound hollow in comparison to the image in front of him.

In that dimly lit hotel room in a barely-rebuilt part of the Wards, Kaidan had poured himself a shot of whiskey and sat down by the window to watch a mediocre-quality omni-tool vid. Why? He didn't really know. He hadn't been sure of much of anything over the past few months. Swallowing against a lump that had formed in his throat, Kaidan set his glass down gently on the nearby table and sat forward to lean his elbows against it, never quite taking his eyes off of the paused vid.

"Hey, Shepard," he said. His voice sounded weirdly loud in the empty room, even with it being as rough and quiet as it was. "If Ash was right, maybe... maybe you're hearing this. I dunno."

He sighed, went silent for a few moments. There was no answer.

"...I got a promotion. Lieutenant Commander. Feels weird, y'know? Every time I've gotten promoted before this, it's felt like I earned it. This... this feels more like, I dunno. Like I'm riding your success, I guess."

Once again, the only response Kaidan received was the forgettable background noise of Citadel traffic outside his window. He couldn't meet the gaze of the man in the vid anymore; that grin was too much for him to take. Looking at it in a vid only reminded him that he'd never see it again.

"I miss you," he said to an empty hotel room.


End file.
